In a traditional electronic payment transaction, such as a credit card transaction, a consumer's primary account number (PAN) is exposed to various entities involved in processing the transaction. For example, the PAN may pass through a merchant terminal, a merchant processor, an acquirer system, a payment processing network, and/or other entities.
Because the consumer's PAN can be exposed to multiple entities during a transaction, some have suggested that a payment “token” be used to conduct a payment transaction. A token serves as an additional security layer to the PAN and in effect becomes a proxy/surrogate to the PAN and may be used in place of PAN while submitting transactions. The use of payment tokens instead of PANs can reduce the risk of fraudulent activity since the consumer's real PAN is never exposed. It can also reduce or eliminate the need for merchants and other entities to be compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). PCI DSS is a standard that organizations, such as online retailers, must follow when storing, processing and transmitting sensitive payment data.
While conventional efforts to use payment tokens have been successful, a number of additional problems need to be solved. For example, conventional PANs often include routing information in the form of a six digit bank identification number (BIN). However, because a consumer's PAN is not apparent from a corresponding token, it may be difficult to identify the source of the token or the issuer of the token. However, it is often necessary to know the source or issuer of the token to route a transaction using the token appropriately.
Particularly complicating matters is the requirement of some payment processing networks to process transactions for consumers associated with another payment processing network. For example, a consumer using a MasterCard™ Debit Card may use Visa's payment processing network (i.e., VisaNet™) to conduct a payment transaction, or vice-versa. In such cases, the appropriate routing for a transaction may not be readily apparent to the payment network processing the transaction.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems, individually and collectively.